


I Beat You

by fallennames



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-02-28 15:08:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2737136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallennames/pseuds/fallennames
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean lives in a society where the wealthy rule and the poor are only there to work. After starting a riot Dean finds himself locked inside of one of the dreaded "compounds" where they do medical testing on those too old to work and brainwash young men like him to become soliders for the rich. Dean won't succumb to their brainwashing, his only thoughts are to get back to Castiel who he last saw being dragged away by Alastair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Pounding feet and screaming surrounded him. The sky was lit up with an orangey haze speckled with floating ash and cinders. Dean’s only thought was to reach him, to reach him before it was too late. The narrow streets were crowded with women and children trying to find their way out of the burning city while the market was filled with men armed with makeshift weapons: lead pipes, bats with nails sticking out the end, their wives’ kitchen knives, and some with only their fists. Dean knew it was nothing compared to the force that was approaching them. He knew that their sparse weaponry would fall under the guard’s superior arsenal, but they were going to fight anyway. Enough was enough. Dean never meant for things to go like this, he started this riot, he started this violence. People would die tonight because of him; he never meant it to go this way. He held naive thoughts of a peaceful revolution, where they tyranny would fall and the just would prevail, how stupid he had been.  
Dean’s shoulder kept bumping people, pushing them out of his way, no time for poise right now. He needed to get to him.  
“Dean! Dean!” Dean whipped around searching for the voice among the masses surrounding him. “Dean!” it was Sammy, Dean pulled him into an abandoned alley so they wouldn’t get trampled. “Where are you going? We have to get out of here! Where’s Cas?” The little boy’s face was covered in blood from a cut just above his eye and his blonde hair covered in ash.  
“I’m going to get Cas, you get out safe! I’ll meet you at the hole just like we always said.”  
“But the other guys are in the market…”  
“Don’t go there, Sammy! Whatever you do! Just get out! Go to the hole!”  
“But…”  
“We’ll all meet you there, please go!” Sammy gave Dean one last fearful look before he disappeared into the crowd. “Be safe.” Dean hoped he would see him again. He was only one section away from Spotfoor now. He ran.  
The back alley that they used as an entrance was, thankfully, empty. Dean jumped, grabbing the retractable ladder and began to climb. When he reached the top his heart stopped. Everything was just as they left it earlier that day. The cards on the round table, crate chairs, the chalkboard, and the boxes all where they left them, but no Cas.  
“Cas! Cas!” His heart hammered erratically against his chest, the sweat on his brow turned cold, and he could no longer get enough oxygen to his lungs.  
“Cas!” his voice came out strangled, a fear he never felt before filled his head with buzzing and made his fingertips go numb. For a moment he was frozen, unable to move, breathe, think. A low chuckling came from behind him. He turned. The first thing he saw was Cas, alive. He was kneeling, his bloody knees showed through his ripped jeans, his hands, bound with duct tape, were in front of him, a green gem twinkled from his finger. His mouth was covered with tape and his face was streaked with tears. Dean noticed, aside from his knees and being tied up, he was unharmed. The last thing Dean noticed were the gloved hands. One tangled in Cas’ hair, the other holding a knife to his throat. Alastair, aka The Rat. Named by Dean when he was five for his beak- like nose and beady little eyes.  
“I wondered when you would show up. I followed your little girlfriend here, to your little spot four, and knew you wouldn’t be far behind.” Alastair smiled, his yellow teeth gleaming in the dim light of the burning city.  
“Let him go!” Dean’s voice came out in a low growl. The fear that he had felt so completely just moments ago, vanished, replaced with a rage unknown to him.  
“It’s a pity you got here before I had any fun with him, but I’ll have plenty of time for that when I get him back to my estate.”  
“Shut your mouth!”  
“Why should I?” He caressed Cas’ face with the tip of his knife while he spoke. “You are the one who took him from me!”  
“You’re sick! You tried to take him while he was only a child!”  
“And if it wasn’t for you I would already have him submissive to me!” His already grotesque face contorted. His beady eyes bulged, his face red and bloated, spittle formed at the edge of his mouth. Then, he was abruptly calm. “But the past is the past. He’s seventeen now, more than grown enough for me to have.” Without warning he dropped Cas and lunged at Dean. For a moment they were tangled up with one another, neither one able to get the advantage. Suddenly, stars exploded behind Dean’s eyes, he fell half unconscious to the gravelly rooftop. He saw a figure walk over and help up Alastair then turn and move to grab Cas. The last thing Dean saw was Cas struggling to get away. The tape from his mouth was off enough for him to scream Dean’s name before everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

“Ready?” Cas’ blue eyes blazed with excitement.

They were around seven or eight. They’d spent all morning arguing about who was the fastest runner while gathering firewood for their mothers on the outskirts of their stack.

The stacks were the small clusters of family homes that surrounded the center of town. Each stack was the same. They were small with a grand total of three rooms; the bedroom, the living/eating area, and the washroom. The bedroom was just big enough for two twin sized mattresses and a small shelf for clothes, the family room wasn’t much bigger and the washroom had only enough room for two people to stand in at a time if one of them was in the shower. No one got a bigger stack, no matter how many kids a person had. Most people stuck to only one or two kids because of this. Cas’ family was bigger though. He had four brothers and a sister; the twins Nick and Michael, Balthazar, Gabriel, and Anna. Michael and Lucifer slept on the living room floor so that the four youngest could cram themselves onto the two twin mattresses in the bedroom. Cas told Dean that he remembers when the twins slept in the room with them when their parents were still around; before they disappeared.

 

Grampa Samuel told Dean that the stacks didn’t exist when he was a kid; that they were built when he was barely a teenager. He said that the government built them after they burned the cities down. When Dean asked why they would burn cities his grampa told him it was because they decided that too many people together creates trouble and the idea that if people banded together they could become powerful enough to force change. That’s what people were doing when the government burned the cities, trapping people inside; trying to force a change in a system that was broken. At Dean’s confused and troubled look his grampa just sighed, “You’ll understand more when you’re older.”

 

Grampa Samuel was always telling Dean things he didn’t quite understand; like about the big machines, like cars, that used to harvest the corn, wheat, and soybeans they planted. He didn’t understand how a machine could do something like that; people harvested the fields not machines. He didn’t understand why, if there were such things, the government take them away like his granmpa said they did. His grampa tried to tell him that it was because the government wanted people “too tired to care if the sky was falling.” Dean didn’t understand what he meant. He could understand that his grampa was frustrated and angry and that his mother was scared and worried. He could understand that the guards were happy to poke people with their cattle prods and to avoid them. He just couldn’t yet understand why things were the way they were. He didn’t know his grampa was angry because he remembered a time when he and his family were truly free, he didn’t know his mother was worried that Dean would end up like his father, and he didn’t understand that the guards were happy to poke people because they got paid a decent sum of money to do so.

 

Dean tried to put what he didn’t understand out of his mind. It only confused him and made him sad for his grampa and mother. He tried to concentrate instead on things that excited him. Like the woods. His stack was lucky. Most stacks face out towards the fields, but his stack faced the woods. Dean loved the woods. He loved the smell of the dirt and the feel of bark beneath his fingers. He loved the random bunches of wildflowers that grew in the summer and the logs of fallen trees he could balance on and jump off of. The sounds of insects buzzing and small animals scurrying on the forest floor calmed him and the canopy that the leaves created cast everything in a shadow that made him feel protected. Dean felt safe in the woods, a feeling he never got in the openness of the fields or marketplace where as guard was always watching to make sure you worked hard enough or didn’t try and start trouble, and were swift to dole out a punishment with their prods if they thought you could move faster. The woods didn’t have guards. The woods didn’t have work or school or the fear dean felt the first time he saw his mother get shocked with a prod. The woods were safe.

 

The best part about the woods was the water hole that Dean found. It was a far way into the woods, farther than he was allowed to go. His mother was always telling him to stay in sight of the house, that if he got lost out there, or found by a vagrant no one could help him. The grownups didn’t go into the woods. His mother told him that there was no reason to go into the woods; that the woods were for vagabonds and criminals. Dean didn’t know what a vagabond or a vagrant was, but he was pretty sure he never saw one in the woods, or a criminal. The more his mother told him to stay in sight of the house, the more Dean wondered from it until one day, about two weeks before he decided to race Cas, he found the water hole. It was large and fairly deep, a rock jutted over the edge, perfect for jumping off of. He showed it to Cas who promptly claimed that the place was “heaven.” Dean rolled his eyes. Castiel believed in heaven and God. He believed that when people died they went to heaven, and that soul mates would always be together there. Dean asked his grampa about soul mates and heaven. His grampa gave him a hard look and told him that God didn’t exist and the best he was going to get was right here on earth so he better try and make his time on here count. Dean decided that even if Cas’ fictional heaven wasn’t real, the hole was the closest thing to it.

 

Dean and Castiel went out to the hole whenever they could, usually right after school before they had to go help grind flour or shuck corn. Dean’s little brother Sammy always whined that he wanted to come with, but at four, Dean thought he was too little and left him to play with Cas’ little sister Anna who was only a year older. Castiel’s brothers Balthazar and Gabriel claimed that they didn’t want to go to Cas’ stupid nerd place anyway after Cas refused to show them where it was. The hole was the destination for the days race. 

 

“I’m bigger than you, there’s no way you can beat me!” Dean taunted Castiel, drawing up to his full height and puffing out his chest to demonstrate just how big he was.

“Yes I can! It doesn’t matter if you’re bigger than me, you’re big clunky feet will slow you down!”

“Na ah!” Dean glared at him. No way was he going to let him win.

“On your mark…” Dean started

“Get set…” Cas continued.

“Go!” they shouted together. Cas and Dean took off into the woods. Dean and Cas were jumping over logs winding their way through the trees and occasionally getting hit in the face with a stray branch. Dean could see Cas pull ahead. No way! He tried speeding up, his lungs were bursting. No fair! He had been practicing for a week, finding the easiest path to the hole and practiced running through it, before he started the argument about who was faster. Cas reached the rock only a second or so before Dean. He leaped in the air with a whoop.

“Yes! I did it!” Cas cheered. “I beat you Dean! Fair and square!” Dean usually won all the games they played and normally it was only by Dean letting Cas win or cheating that Cas got the upper hand.

“Whatever, I let you win.” Dean pouted. He didn’t like losing. Castiel’s smile slid off his face at Dean’s words.

“You did not! If you lost on purpose you wouldn’t be so mad right now.” Cas’ face was red with anger, and Dean knew he was being mean, but he was angry too.

“I’m not mad!” Dean’s stance and tone betrayed his words, his face was begining to become just as flushed with anger as Cas’ was.

“I beat you Dean, don’t be a baby and just admit that I won!” Cas’ fists were clenched at his sides and his voice shook.

"No you didn’t!” Dean stepped closer to Cas. “And don’t call me a baby!” Cas’ eyes held unshed tears as he took his own step towards Dean.

“Yes I did!”

“I always let you win and you know it!” The words flew out of Dean’s mouth before he could call them back. Instantly he was filled with regret. Cas’ tears brimmed over and he looked so hurt that Dean couldn’t believe that it was him who put that expression on his face. He never wanted to see Cas have that look again. It happened so fast, Dean could barely comprehend what happened. Cas hit him! Right in the eye. He hit him so hard Dean was sitting flat on his butt on top of the rock they’d been standing on seconds before. It surprised him how much power was behind his small fist. He could already feel his eye swelling shut. He couldn’t believe Cas punched him. Gentle, benevolent, bee watching _Cas_ hit him. He stood up and looked around, just in time to see Cas disappearing behind the trees as he ran towards the stacks. He _was_ fast.

 

 

Dean’s eyes snapped open. The dream of his race in the woods with Cas fading fast. His heart was a jackhammer in his chest. He tried to sit up but found his wrists and ankles bound to the metal frame of a cot. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok guys sorry about leaving you in suspense for a bit longer, but i had to do some world building before we moved forward. tell me what you think in the comments. don't pull your punches! cas sure doesn't!


	3. Chapter 3

Dean’s eyes snapped open. The dream of his race in the woods with Cas fading fast. His heart was a jackhammer in his chest. He tried to sit up but found his wrists and ankles bound to the metal frame of a cot with thinly padded cuffs. The cot was old and rusted, the mattress thin and lumpy. The room was only a concrete block with a heavy metal door and small window too high up to look out of. Dean took inventory, his head was a little fuzzy, his wrists and ankles were raw and his muscles ached like he couldn’t believe, but nothing seemed to be broken. Dean turned his head to get a look at the door to his right, but was met with a fresh wave of nausea and pain. He remembered then he got hit in the back of his head. Why would someone hit him in the head? Cas! The events of the night before bombarded his memory; the fire, the weapons, the blood that painted Sammy’s face, and Cas’ look of terror. The image of Cas danced on the forefront of his mind overshadowing every other thought of that night. The look he gave Dean when Alistair was dragging him away was worse than a kick in the face. Dean would know.   Where was Cas! He had to get out of here he had to find him. Where _was_ he? Looking around, tugging absently at his bindings a realization was slowly dawning on him. The restraints, the faint smell of anti-septic, the general feeling that he might be in hell. He realized now what he couldn’t comprehend when he woke up, he was at a compound.

           

            His mother always told him if he didn’t keep his head down he was going to end up in one just like his father. It was looking like she was right, but he couldn’t find it in himself to just sit passively by while evil happened around him, even as a small child he had a keen sense of justice. He guessed he got that from his father and guessed that’s why he was now at a compound. Compounds were only the scary stories you told around a campfire, the thing you told little kids who misbehaved _“If you don’t listen to your mother she’ll send you to a compound.”_ Dean never actually believed that the rumors were real. He always thought that those who went missing, the ones who were getting too vocal about their discomfort and causing a stir, were quietly taken to a side road far from the stacks and fields in the middle of the night, shot, and unceremoniously thrown into a ditch. The compounds were never proven, hard to prove something that no one ever came back from. But the rumors circulated his entire life. He was always hearing whispered conversations about supposed sightings of people who were gone.  

 

            _“Gordon swears he saw Bella up at the Mcleod’s estate when he was dropping off a shipment of soybeans!” Meg whispered to Ruby. Ruby rolled her eyes._

_“Shut up, Bella’s been missing for months. She’s probably dead. Gordon was seeing things.”_

_“No! He swears it was her, and she was with the guards up there! Gordon said they probably brainwashed her at a compound. He wants to get her back.”_

_“Compounds?” Ruby scoffed. “I thought Gordon had more sense than that. Everyone knows that compounds are just a scare tactic, I won’t believe he said that until I hear it from him.”_

_“Good luck finding him.” Meg said. “He hasn’t been in the fields in days. No one knows where he is.”_

 

Dean knows now that Gordon probably did see Bella guarding the estate. He knows now that most of the sightings people reported were actually true. He won’t become one of them. He won’t become a solider for the ones that stole Cas from him. He’s going to get out of this hell even if it takes 40 years. They won’t break him. He can’t believe any of this is real. He remembered a conversation his mother had with his grandfather while he was sitting at the table. He was maybe nine.

            “If you keep stealing pieces of dough I’ll have them ship you to a compound!” His mother laughed as she swatted away his grandfather’s hand for the third time.

            “Oh, hush! I don’t think those crazy medical centers are real, just a ploy to scare us, Mof.” Mof, the nick name he gave his daughter when she was little and said she hated the smell of “those stinky wittle mof balls.”

            “Oh, and where do you suppose they took Ellen’s husband last month? What about my husband? Hmmm? Do you suppose they just bring them to the middle of nowhere and shoot them?”

            “Now, Mof, I didn’t say nothing about your husband, I’m just sayin’ they sound fake. What would they want to do medical test on old people for? And why would they brainwash the younger ones? Just seems less of a hassle to shoot ‘em.” Mary’s shoulders stiffened, she dropped her dough, and marched out of the room. His grandfather called after her.

            “Mary! Don’t be like that!” She wasn’t listening. He shook his head as he got out of his chair to go after her. “Your mother is so damn touchy! Can’t even have one conversation with her without offending her in some way.”  He said to Dean with a sigh. Dean just shrugged his shoulders; his dad was gone before he could really remember him so he figured he didn’t have to feel sad about it. He had his mom and grampa and that was more than enough.

            “What’s a compound?” asked Sammy who was sitting on the floor with a worksheet from school about crops and seasons. Dean smiled at his little brother. His birthday had been the week before. Dean ruffled his brothers long hair, he’d have to convince him to let their mom cut it again soon.

            “Nothing you have to worry about, Sammy.” Sam frowned,

            “But what _are_ they? Kids at school like to play compound. If you get tagged you have to stand in a square until someone else gets tagged, but none of them know what it really is either.”

            “They’re just stories, Sam. It’s not real. Grampa says it’s just the government trying to scare people into not making trouble.”

            “But what do they _do_ at compounds? This girl at school, Jess, said that they lock them in a cellar and never let them out again and they have to eat the mushrooms that grow on the walls to survive!” Sam’s face was lit with excitement at his childish fantasy. Dean laughed.

            “That’s not what happens. If they were real people say that they train the strong to be soliders for the government and that the weak and old are used for tests for medicine. But it’s not real. Like grampa said it would be too much trouble to do that.”

            “So they shoot them? Just like that?” Sam’s eyes starting welling up. Dean crouched down to Sam’s level.

            “No Sam, don’t cry. I’m sorry ok. I didn’t mean that people just get shot.”  Dean smoothed down Sam’s hair trying to comfort him. They both saw a man get shot a few months ago in the market for trying to attack a guard. Guards don’t typically have guns. Only the captain is allowed and he happened to be there that day. Their mother tried to cover their eyes but it was too late. They saw the blood pooling around the man’s lifeless form. 

            “Then what happens to the people who go missing? What happened to Bobby? And Dad?” Sam was trying not to cry but his lip was quivering. Dean paused. He didn’t want to tell Sammy that they _were_ probably just shot. He doesn’t like thinking about it, he’d like to think that they’re alive. But he’s nine, he knows better. He doesn’t want Sammy to be sad, so he lies.

            “Sometimes, Sammy, people just go missing. It happens and it sucks. But they’re probably better off than they are here.”  

            “Are you sure?” Sam sniffled. “Because I can’t think what would be worse than getting shot.”

            “I’m sure, Sammy. Have I ever been wrong before. I told you, your big brother knows everything.” Sam looked at Dean skeptically. Dean rolled his eyes. The kid was getting to smart for his own good.

      “Here, have a piece of dough.” Dean plucked a piece from the deflated lump on the table and gave it to Sam who ate it happily momentarily forgetting his worries about compounds and getting shot. His mother and Grandfather would come inside soon, laughing, their fight forgotten.

          

    Dean wondered what his mother would say to him now. His mother. He hadn’t thought of her since he left to go meet the guys that morning at Spotfoor. Was it that morning? He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious; it could have been a few hours or days for all he knew. He rolled his head to one side then the other. The nausea and pain had died down and he couldn’t feel a knot on his head, so he guessed a few days. How did everything manage to get so screwed up? He didn’t mean to start a riot, he didn’t want death. When he was 11 Alastair called him a revolutionary. He never heard the word before; he asked his grandfather what it meant. He told him it meant someone who didn’t like authority, someone who didn’t follow the rules. He said that they used to teach about all different types of revolutionaries in school, but didn’t anymore. Now all schools taught were how to farm. What seasons to plant which crop, how and why to switch and move crops around so the soil didn’t lose all its nutrients, and what happened to the crops after they were shipped. They were also taught simple math and reading. The books they were given to read were all about farming, production and shipping. The very few fiction books that were available to read all had to do with a person that found happiness from following the rules. Dean hated reading. No one in the books were like him, or like his grampa. No one in the books wanted things to change or thought about a better life.

 

        “I’m sorry, Dean.” His grampa said to him one day. “I should have read more. There used to be so many books to read about people fighting against an evil force; books about a single person who found it in himself to save the world. There used to be a really popular books about a boy wizard with green eyes like yours Dean. He was able to save the world. I wish I would have read them so I could tell you the story. I thought reading was silly at the time.” Dean figured they didn’t have books like that anymore because it kept people passive, it kept them from wanting a better way of life because they had an example to follow, an example to give them hope that the underdog could win; even if that example was from a boy wizard. 

 

        Dean came back to his present reality where no one, certainly not a wizard, was going to save him, where he couldn’t even save himself. He’d been awake for two hours already and no one had come for him. He wondered if maybe they’d just leave him here to rot, die a slow death. How unfair would that be? He wouldn’t even get the chance to fight to live, to fight to see Cas and Sammy again. He sighed and felt sleep pulling at him. Despite his discomfort he felt himself drifting. He was still so sore, and so tired. He hoped he dreamed of Cas. He usually did. But sometimes there would be nightmares. He was already living a nightmare, he didn’t need to dream of one too. He concentrated on thoughts of Cas as he slowly fell asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, this chapter was going to be longer, but the spacing works better this way. Up to this point we've spent a lot of time in Dean's head and memories, and will continue to spend time with Dean's memories, however, next time we finally get to see some of the people who have Dean tied down, and some are not as evil as Dean might want to think.


End file.
